Two inmates serving time for a 1995 murder that some investigators now believe they didn’t commit will stay behind bars after a judge rejected plans to immediately free them.

Eric Glisson and Cathy Watkins, who've been in prison for 17 years, are among five people whose convictions in the killing a Bronx livery cab driver are now being re-examined due to new evidence linking the murder to two gang members.

The Bronx District Attorney had agreed on a plan to release Glisson and Wakins to house arrest, but Bronx Judge Efrain Alvarado rejected that option on Friday, reported theNew York Post.

Imprisoned: Eric Glisson (pictured right, with his lawyer Peter Cross), was convicted in the 1995 killing of a livery cab driver in New York City

The judge says he has no power to grant bail to someone serving a sentence that hasn't been overturned.

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'There’s no provision under the law to make a bail application at this point, when a defendant is still serving a sentence,' state court spokesman David Bookstaver told the Post.

The bail rejection came after prosecutors had arranged for Glisson and Watkins to have electronic monitoring bracelets so they could enjoy freedom for the first time in 17 years, reported the Post.

Fighting for freedom: Glisson wrote to federal prosecutors saying he'd heard the murder was the work of a gang called Sex, Money and Murder

Glisson’s lawyer, Peter Cross told the Post of his frustration at the decision.

‘To say the least, I was extremely disappointed that the court — seeing that the district attorney was willing to do this — refused to exercise the power that we certainly think it has to do justice,' Cross said.

Glisson and Watkins are among five people convicted in the murder of livery cab driver Baith Diop, who was gunned down on January 19, 1995, amid a rash of taxi driver murders around New York City.

Press accounts had described how, according to police, the Senegalese immigrant begged for his life before being shot in the back and neck. Ballistics showed that he was shot with two .38-caliber handguns that were never recovered.

Rather than treat the crime as a fatal holdup, New York Police Department detectives and prosecutors linked it to a complex conspiracy by a band of drug dealers involved in the execution-style killing of FedEx executive Denise Raymond two days earlier.

Investigators alleged that Diop was killed as part of a related scheme to steal a pile of drug money that one of his passengers was carrying that night.

At the first of two trials, three men were convicted in both the killing of Denise Raymond and Diop. At the second, a jury found Glisson and Watkins guilty in the cabbie homicide. All received lengthy sentences.

Glisson's lawyer said that as the years passed, his client exhausted all his appeals before writing a letter to federal prosecutors. In it, he said he had heard that the cabbie killing was the work of a gang called Sex, Money and Murder or SMM.

The letter, though addressed to a prosecutor who had left the office, by coincidence made its way into the hands of John O’Malley - a former Bronx homicide detective familiar with SMM, the New York Times reported.

Jailed: Glisson has been behind bars at Sing Sing prison for 17 years; it is now thought he was wrongfully convicted of murder

The names of Gilbert Vega and Jose Rodriguez, two SMM members, rang a bell for O'Malley. Both men had confessed to killing a Bronx cab driver in late 1994 or early 1995 – an admission that couldn't be corroborated at the time.

Vega and Rodriguez confessed after becoming cooperators in 2003.

The investigator re-interviewed the two men. They described again how they were riding in a cab together when they decided to rob the driver. When he put up a fight, they shot him and jumped out of the car without knowing whether he was dead.

Earlier this month, Glisson and Watkins filed court papers to have their convictions thrown out. Their next court hearing is scheduled for October 19.

'Deep down, I feel like the justice system failed me,' Glisson said in an interview earlier this month. 'But you just have to try to move on.'